Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0021440, Tue, 8 Mar 2011 15:52:54 +0000

Subject
Re: iridules & cloud iridescence
Date
Body
Is the mooted terminological inexactitude distracting us from yet another
example of Shade as indifferent, plodding Poet?

"The iridule ‹ when, beautiful and strange, / In a bright sky above a
mountain range/ One opal cloudlet in an oval form/ Reflects the rainbow of a
thunderstorm/ Which in a distant valley has been staged ..."

Count the clichés (beautiful, strange, bright) and corny rhymes. Surely a
deliberate contrast with the poetistic iridule and opal cloudlet . Is VN,
indifferent to reader praise and criticism, trying to test us for misplaced
obsequious flattery or hoping for shocked chuckles of disbelief? Elsewhere,
the Cantos reveal VN/Shade in the finest poetic flights. Here, the standard
plummets, and one assumes for good reason. Not Homer nodding, but
sleep-walking over the edge.
Stan Kelly-Bootle.

On 02/03/2011 19:21, "Jerry Friedman" <jerryfriedman1@GMAIL.COM> wrote:

> JF: I'm not going to argue with Gary Lipon about whether Shade's iridule and
> Nabokov's whatever was more likely to be a sundog (my suspicion, not
> conclusion) or cloud iridescence.  I agree with his point that sundogs don't
> look that much like rainbows, but neither do iridescent clouds, in my
> experience--I've certainly never seen a "bow" shape.  Either way, it may be
> amusing that Kinbote is right for once.  However, I will say that cloud
> iridescence isn't rare at all--one can look for it whenever the sun is shining
> through or next to thin clouds--and if he hasn't observed it yet, he may enjoy
> doing so.
>  
> I'm afraid I can't see Shade as using a metonymy to define a scientific
> phenomenon that readers are presumably unfamiliar with.
>  
> Jansy Mello mentions her enviable experiences in Brasilia.  I must say I don't
> think any place on Earth has the sun at any different angles at sunset to the
> horizon than any other, but maybe Brasilia's climate favors the kind of
> weather when these phenomena appear, and unquestionably some people observe
> them better than others.  Also, rainwater can certainly reflect a rainbow (it
> must have been spectacular!) because it can reflect anything, but clouds can't
> reflect an image of anything.
>  
> I can see that Nabokov might have made Shade inattentive in referring to a
> rainbow (though the mention of a thunderstorm suggests a real rainbow), but I
> wonder what Nabokov and Vera said in their letters.  I'm sure real rainbows
> are indeed common in Telluride during the summer.
>  
> And I don't see why the peaceful scenery, not the thunderstorm, is a deceit.
>  
> Jerry Friedman
> ----------------------------------
>
> GL: I greatly appreciate the references, but I disagree with the conclusion. I
> think the phenomenon is simply cloud iridescence. My previous thought was it
> was a hoax that pointed to how much the reader is willing to believe the words
> of a writer or one of his character. I was pretty certain it wasn't a sundog,
> they're too different. But shimmering pastels sounds rather rare and wonderful
> to me, and would be something likely to be remembered. 
> The definition that Shade gives is to be taken metronymic-ally: serving merely
> to associate iridule and rainbow, the container and the contained.
> I'm voting for cloud iridescence.
>  
> JM: Thanks to Gary Lipon because he returned to the fantastic  "iridule" image
> in PF: "The iridule ‹ when, beautiful and strange, / In a bright sky above a
> mountain range/ One opal cloudlet in an oval form/ Reflects the rainbow of a
> thunderstorm/   Which in a distant valley has been staged ..."
> I've seen rainbows in Brasilia that look like wide open three-dimensional
> arch-ways (not flat ribbons), something perhaps caused by our location in
> relation to the setting sun. Parhelions lie "parhelially," ie, usually at the
> opposite side of a rainbow and, mostly, against a "bright sky" as Shade's
> "iridule". 
>  
> Incessant rain over wide watery surfaces, in the setting sun, extend the
> rainbow-colors all over the landscape (once, driving over a bridge, I felt I
> was inside an iridescent crystal hemisphere) and, in this particular case,
> they differ from "cloud iridescence" for there's no cloud standing in
> isolation, nor the refraction takes on the shape of a bow*.  However (who
> knows?) this peculiarity may be tied with the formation of Shade's cloudy
> iridule, since a rainbow can also be reflected onto a glistening surface right
> under one's feet. I'd have believed in the "physical reality" of Shade's
> description were it not for his powerful metaphor (the turmoils of a distant
> thunderstorm can be reflected as a deceitful peaceful scenery, for example...)
>  
> ..............................................................................
> .........................
> *- perhaps Nabokov is indicating the unattentive insistence when applying the
> word "bow" automatically when, what the eye is then registering, is  only an
> "iridescence". 


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